It
is a weird feeling to lift the lid off
something that has been sealed and kept
in the dark for 35 years. You don't know
what may turn up.

Thanks
largely to the Internet, about a dozen
of us who were friends in the Big Red
One's 1st Engineer Battalion in Vietnam
have reconnected via a Web site, e-mails
and phone calls. We didn't train
together, didn't know each other before
the war and didn't maintain contact
after it. But for whatever reason, now
it seems important to look back on 1969
and remember. Or try to.

After
so many years, it isn't easy to recall
much of anything with clarity. Of
course, there are unforgettable people,
places, incidents and close calls. But
trying to unspool the 365 days
in-country and connect the strands is an
exercise in frustration as much as
recollection.

Who
was that guy shot at the laterite pit?
Which top sergeant tore down the posters
in our hootch? Who got bit by a snake
while hooking up a Claymore? What ever
happened to that Rome Plow driver
wounded at Firebase Huertgen?

For
most of my life, like most of the other
guys in Headquarters and Headquarters
Company in 1969, the answers weren't
pertinent. You did your year hoping to
get home in one piece, then put it
behind you; locked it away and got on
with living. Guys you spent 10, 11, 12
months with -- side by side, day and
night, ducking rockets or steeped in
sweaty boredom -- were forgotten.

Maybe
they surfaced in a funny anecdote now
and then. At most, you might wonder what
happened to Ed Garner or Ray Powell or
James Foley, and how it might be fun to
have a few drinks and tell stories. But
too much time had passed, and we're all
different people than we were at 19 or
22 in Lai Khe, Di an and Quon Loi.

So
nothing happened; that year was left
buried in the past. No one was eager to
talk about it anyway. In the 1970s,
Vietnam was a fresh wound and not a
polite subject for conversation. In the
1980s, life was too earnest for much
reflection on the war, as families,
wives, kids and the economy took
priority. The memorial wall in
Washington, so moving with all those
names carved in black marble, brought
some of it back. But the war was history
by then and growing more dusty by the
day.

So
it was a surprise to open an e-mail from
Ralph Webb asking whether I had been in
the 1st Infantry Division. We had spent
nearly the entire year together, in the
same hootch and the same orderly room.
Turned out he was right here in Austin
-- though we wouldn't have recognized
each other on the street, the years
having been unkind enough to leave us
looking our ages.

Recently
came an e-mail from Andy Giancana in
Chicago, who served with the battalion
medics. Then from New York, David
Cepler, company executive officer; from
Fort Worth, Job Gonzalez, of the Tunnel
Rats, and his platoon leader, Rat 6 Jack
Flowers; and from Arizona, Sgt. Richard
Montez. People began putting their
pictures on the Diehardengineer Web
site. (Diehard is the unit and radio
designation for the 1st Engineer
Battalion).

It's
a strange phenomenon, reconnecting with
a past long buried. It's mainly good
conversation, but it can drift to the
somber. Not that we have many buried
memories we'd rather not dig up -- there
is little of that in this group of
combat engineers, clerks, drivers and
the like. And even the most painful
memories have been dulled by years.

But
the sense of fatalism that overlaid the
war is still present. We recall our
friend Robert Pitts, in his steel helmet
and flak jacket, who died when shrapnel
caught him in the throat while on guard
duty. If your number was up, it was up.
Still, you ran for the bunkers when you
heard the rockets whine. But we made it
this far, and there's talk about getting
together at the Diehard reunion in
Springfield, Mo., in September.

It
could be the dustup over George Bush and
John Kerry and Vietnam that got us
thinking about one another. Or the war
in Iraq. Five soldiers from our old unit
were killed one day in April.

Or
maybe it was just time to lift the lid
and stir the memories, before it's too
late.